Why current job design is boring?

[Tunda]

When the game challenges you to keep your rotation going or adjust it based on the content it does stay interesting to me. It also breaks up the monotony in farming since it offers more room for improvement.

Not all jobs designed to have muscle memory.. for example dancer/old AST/kinda BRD, proc/rng based job that require you to have quick action.

keeping everything under one window limit the jobs and encounter design.

it's good that we have both BUT that could be achieved by changing the philosophy of many jobs and removing 1min/2min window for most jobs

[Tunda]

Healers theoretically at least still have to stop DPSing to heal occasionally, thus leaving less uptime than Tanks and ranged phys. And Ranged Phys still would have their own buffs to increasing their DPS as a whole.

That's why tanks feel more like DPS jobs with oGCD mitigations and passive defensives

[Tunda]

Wouldn’t that just make things even worse for phys ranged though? 2/3 of them have ‘buffs party members’ as part of their core identity and gameplay. And since ‘ranged tax’ has to exist (apparently) it’s not like they'll ever get high enough dps that it actually changes how they compare to the other roles in terms of output. Which, makes Machinist raise a lot of questions lol, but that’s a whole other topic.

That said, I can totally understand removing buffs from most jobs; they didn’t need to give basically everyone a party buff ability lol. Like, who plays a Monk or a Dragoon like ‘oh man can’t wait to go buff and support the party’, instead of ‘oh man I can’t wait to go punch/jump on things’ lol.

It's defiantly weird playing a Reaper then buffing party damage and healing them.. I mean for fantasy standpoint it is impossible.

MNK to me is more support than RPR which is in fantasy standpoint is logical to heal as a monk or buffing party damage.

but again we can have 2 MNK jobs:
1- Support MNK which is monk with more supportive kit.
2- DPS Striker which is punching machine

[AgathaAllalong]

The homogenized design of the jobs is super boring. All of the tanks/healers especially just feel the same. None of them have actual distinctive strengths or unique play styles.

[Azurarok]

Not all jobs designed to have muscle memory.. for example dancer/old AST/kinda BRD, proc/rng based job that require you to have quick action.

keeping everything under one window limit the jobs and encounter design.

it's good that we have both BUT that could be achieved by changing the philosophy of many jobs and removing 1min/2min window for most jobs

Oh yeah no I wasn't saying the current job design is good. I have a burning hatred for the 2 min meta from how much it's limiting job design. I'm saying it's a big part of what makes the battle system fun and they shouldn't be destroying it like they had for the past 2-3 expacs

[CaptainLagbeard]

That's why tanks feel more like DPS jobs with oGCD mitigations and passive defensives

But the thing is, Healers currently have much less of a base level of damage output than tanks do, and we also can end up getting less uptime. I want Healers and Tanks to be at the same base level. If SE is afraid of giving Healers more attacks, it can just mean having Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis spam + the DoT doing roughly the same amount of damage as Tanks doing doing their rotation. And then losing DPS as they have to heal, and not having less damage by having too low potency.

[PercibelTheren]

AST ShB and EW have more skill expression than WHM.. because you have to understand card system and act fast after drawing random card AND manage people HP

It is overwhelming for most healers.. I have seen people complaining why RNG is there even in balance perspective
You can't design RNG job with scripted encounter design with no algorithm that will change how boss behave

You could straight up ignore AST cards in all casual content and be completely fine. It wasn't complex at all, either, just busy. Again, who are these "most healers"? Did you ask healer players? The RNG was completely negligible as well unless you were trying to get funny numbers on a forbidden website and I can't imagine they would listen to people whose feedback amounted to "I'm not getting the result I want on a third party tool that's explicitly against the TOS". The only thing I saw complaints about was Astrodyne because it felt useless.

Personally, AST was the last bastion of a healing job I still enjoyed in this game. The rest of them make me fall asleep. I don't know why ALL healers have to be extremely simple when there are 4 of them. Tell BLM players that BLM is "too overwhelming for most caster players" and needs to become like SMN, see how that goes. Why is it healers and only healers that get singled out like this? It makes no sense.

[PercibelTheren]

Does job design even remain interesting outside of that initial period as a new player when you're learning how a game's job/class system works and what it tends to offer?

There comes a point when job design starts feeling very boring and mechanical because you know it well. Muscle memory and habit take over from conscience decision.

Rather than try to guess at what might make it more interesting, come up with examples from other games where it already does remain interesting year after year then identify the element that allows their design to remain interesting.

Chances are good it's a normal reaction to how systems work, whether in games or in life. Anything can end up boring once you do it enough.

Chloromancer in RIFT never became boring to me and I mained it for 3 years. Why? Because you had to be incredibly proactive, since most of your healing came from executing your rotation. It's what Sage should have been like, instead of "better Scholar with an automated fairy".

[Ramiee]

Support first and DPS second can exist but it is a bad design choice to have dps first support second.

Because it will never be as good as dps and it will never be as support as supports

Tanks are dps first tanks second which it is less supportive than current healers

Thats my point.

[Tunda]

You could straight up ignore AST cards in all casual content and be completely fine. It wasn't complex at all, either, just busy. Again, who are these "most healers"? Did you ask healer players? The RNG was completely negligible as well unless you were trying to get funny numbers on a forbidden website and I can't imagine they would listen to people whose feedback amounted to "I'm not getting the result I want on a third party tool that's explicitly against the TOS". The only thing I saw complaints about was Astrodyne because it felt useless.

Personally, AST was the last bastion of a healing job I still enjoyed in this game. The rest of them make me fall asleep. I don't know why ALL healers have to be extremely simple when there are 4 of them. Tell BLM players that BLM is "too overwhelming for most caster players" and needs to become like SMN, see how that goes. Why is it healers and only healers that get singled out like this? It makes no sense.

Ignoring main kit of the job shows how bad current balance/encounter design is..

Even casual players who play AST should know each card do even in terms of functionality not numbers.
I watch people in forms begging to remove RNG now we have it..
I want RNG to exist but fixing fundamentals first.

Current state of AST is 100% can't be support it has 2 buttons each min to buff party..
I want AST to have full support kit but it can't AST will never be like Dancer and will never be close to BRD because the job has too much responsibility and 2 buttons each min will not solve the issue.. and again This is my opinion..

to have quick fix but broke the identity is to make cards party wide buffs without giving the choice to think too much on to who you will give it.. but again this solution is bad and braindead

Removing every DPS kit other than spamming Malefic that AST and keeping cards more damage oriented have could be a solution also but again.. it will still be simplified

AST ShB was peak healer design in FFXIV.. they remove it because pure/shield separation which kills the main reason why people like AST

BLM is a simple job even simpler than MNK/SAM it is all about fire4 the challenge to the job is positioning.. which is not that complicated you just have to be strategic more than anga bonga